Tag Archives: photography

A last day at Antelope Island

31 Monday Dec 2012

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It’s the last day of 2012. There have been a lot of wrap up posts floating around and I kept thinking how I would wrap up this year. A year of pictures, showing one per month? A list of things I learned? A list of all the fantastic things I did? Others  have written eloquent posts going down memory lane. Me? I kept drafting one and then I felt like I was creating something akin to the ol’ Christmas Letter.

Today Steve and I visited Antelope Island. It’s the last day of the year and the last full day we have together before he heads back to Calgary tomorrow. For me, it’s the perfect wrap up of my year.

Antelope Island in Winter

Antelope Island in Winter

It was perfectly white. Perfectly peaceful and perfectly sums up how I feel about this year: A balance of harshness and beauty. Challenges and triumphs. But mostly, it’s where Steve and I go to escape the world and spend quality time together.

View the gallery by clicking on any one of the photos below.  They look yummier that way.

Winter Holiday at the Grand Canyon

27 Thursday Dec 2012

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Grand Canyon Rendezvous

I didn’t expect snow at the Grand Canyon. All I could remember from my first visit 30 years prior was the scorching Arizona heat of 103° F, and add about 10 degrees to that and you get what the temperature was in our non air conditioned family van. My brother, sister and I were passing ice cubes to each other—ice we grabbed from our Coleman water chest—and rubbing it on our faces and necks as my baby sister was bawling because she found the heat unbearable too. It was so damn hot. That’s what I remember from my first trip to the Grand Canyon.

But this time was different. It was my first Christmas with my boyfriend, Steve, who was visiting from Toronto. After our courtship blossomed in Scotland, then grew in England, Steve and I found ourselves in a long-distance romance that was taking us to the Grand Canyon in the winter.

We took our time driving the 500-mile journey from Salt Lake City, stopping in Las Vegas for a night and exploring sites like Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats and Hoover Dam along the way.

We pass the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah

The Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah (or what I like to refer to as the Devil’s Ice Skating Rink)

It’s a different road trip when it’s not over 100° F. There was no crying baby sister, no suffering in a van with my brother and sisters. Just a quiet ride with a fella I met nine months earlier. This time I could really pay attention to the landscape. And it helps when you’re traveling with a geologist. I learned more from Steve than I ever did in my college geology course. (Even more helpful is an instructor makes you swoon.)

Hoover Dam on the border of Nevada and Arizona

Hoover Dam on the border of Nevada and Arizona

As we approachedt the Grand Canyon it was dark and snowy and I couldn’t see a thing. I hate driving in the snow and so I pulled over and had Steve drive into the park.

Snow in Arizona. I couldn’t quite make sense of that. Arizona is supposed to be freaking hot, not wintry.

We stayed in the park at the Yavapai Lodge, which had painted cinder blocks for walls. resembling a college dormitory and a toilet that ran all night. The accommodations weren’t lush, but they were practical and we got a good night’s sleep. After a full hot breakfast in the cafeteria we made our way to the rim of the canyon. 100_0824Tourists filled the pathways near the edge, just like they did when I was nine, except people were in parkas, scarves and wool caps, not t-shirts and shorts.

Snow was falling and my fingers could barely stand the icy chill as I snapped photos with my little Kodak camera. This is not the same Grand Canyon I saw when I was nine.

I looked over the edge to look down in the canyon–the Grand Canyon–to see that it wasn’t the hot, scorching beast I remembered, but it looked like a grand dessert with layer upon layer of oranges and browns and golds with a dusting of powdered sugar on top. A geological Mille-feuille.

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A Grand Canyon Mille-feuille

I’m not a fan of winter or snow, which I know is weird because I live in Utah where most people really like the stuff. But to see snow blanketed over the Grand Canyon is a spectacular treat, which most people never get to see. So, you think you’ve seen the Grand Canyon? Sure, maybe you’ve seen it in summer when it’s blowing its hot breath at you, but try seeing it dressed with snow. It’s a much kinder and sweeter Grand Canyon. It will blow you a snowflake kiss.

Click on any photo below and it will enlarge and take you to a slide show. Much better way to view these.

The disappearance and reappearance of Bryce Canyon

11 Sunday Nov 2012

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Bryce Canyon National Park Rendezvous

“It’s here, I’m sure it is,” I said. “I mean, it’s a big ass canyon. Where could it have gone?” It was an October morning and we had just walked on the paved trail from our cabin, following the signs to view Bryce Canyon. The fog was so dense I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of me and the colors that would have been there—the red rocks, the green sage—had been washed away as if we were catapulted into a black and white movie from the forties. And the canyon. It was gone.

It’s as if it were Brigadoon.

That’s me in front of Bryce Canyon. Yes, really.

And this is Steve in front of Bryce Canyon

This was our third rendezvous. We were now on the same continent, which was progress, I thought. It had been two and a half months since our rendezvous in England and six months since we first met in Scotland where Steve had been living. I was so excited to take Steve to see Bryce Canyon. I actually hadn’t been since I was a kid on a family vacation but I remembered the orangey red clayish rock and the hoodoos that pointed up to the sky like a million little fingers. This time was different. I had a geologist with me (Steve) and he narrated our five hour drive from Salt Lake City to Bryce Canyon with explanations about the different color of rock, the strata and iron.

Alas, my excitement and anticipation of experiencing Bryce Canyon with Steve unravelled like an old sweater. I was bummed. I really wanted Steve to see this beautiful part of Utah and the weather ruined it. It’s like traveling a long distance and finding that the museum you wanted to visit is closed. Or that all the tickets to a tour are sold out. Just as we were beginning to turn around on the path back to our cabin a couple emerged out of the fog. Really. Like right out of the fog. They could tell that we were a bit disappointed as we were snapping pictures of each other in front of a backdrop of white and as they approached us one of them said, “You have to take the trail down. It’s beautiful down there and the fog is beginning to lift. You see more at the bottom.”

No convincing needed. Off we went down the trail.

We walked down, down, down and we began to see the red rock. Fog curled around the hoodoos and the more we walked down the less fog we saw. It was quiet—there weren’t very many people around, but what I thought at first to be a disappointment ended up being an extraordinarily unique experience in one of the most popular National Parks in the U.S.

Bryce Canyon, alone, is a spectacle to behold, but without all the summer tourists and with curling, swirling fog, it’s a whole different experience. Not many people get to experience Bryce Canyon this way:

I imagined that maybe I was on another planet. Is this what people mean when they say,”Out of this world?” If so, I totally get it now.

Four years later we visited Bryce Canyon National Park and as we walked down the same path on a warm September day we saw the hoodoos standing upright without the curtain of fog, and in unison we said, “So this is what it looks like!”

A picture perfect Bryce Canyon (sans fog)

For more pictures of Bryce Canyon National Park check out the photos in the slide show.

Sorry Canada, but I’m telling everyone about the Okanagan Valley

27 Saturday Oct 2012

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Calgary has it’s Stampede, Banff lays claim to Lake Louise and the rising Canadian Rockies, but head just west of there and you land smack into a wonderful valley called Okanagan in British Columbia. The Okanagan Valley is wedged between two mountain ranges (Columbia and Cascade) and painted with orchards and vineyards that line the long, meandering Okanagan Lake, which travels southward toward Washington State. Canadians seem to know all about this place (natch), but the rest of us? Not a clue. And I think the Canadians like it that way.

Vineyards in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia

This wasn’t my first time visiting Okanagan Lake. My first visit was when I was dating Steve five years ago. Color me so shocked to find all those vineyards lined up as grids all along the valley, and the orchards of apples that stretch from Kelowna–the main city in the valley–up into the hills.

The weather is very mild compared to the rest of Canada, which I realize is not saying much. The speed is slow like you would expect in an area that attracts retiring Canadians who consider themselves snowbirds, but not snowbirdy enough to dip their toes into the United States. In fact, living in Okanagan Valley is much more tolerable than, say Montana, which though certainly south of Canada isn’t a place where you’d want to winter.  It’s all relative, you know.

Vineyards in Okanagan Valley, British Columbia

I’ll state the obvious here: water sports are aplenty and a person has no trouble finding their preferred watercraft. There’s also the Jazz Festival every September, and winery after winery. I’m not talking a handful of wineries–but oodles of wineries. Sure, there are some smallish operations, but there are also the more well-known Inniskillin, Mission Hill and Jackson-Triggs. And with wineries you’ll naturally find award-winning restaurants. Oh, the restaurants! (Can we retire here, sweetie?  Just wonderin’. Oh wait, I forgot we were retiring in Panama. Maybe the Okanagan Valley can be the Summer home.)

Say “cheese!”


In between our decadent winery meals we returned to one of our favorite lesser-known points of interest: The Carmelis Goat Cheese Artisan, Inc.in Kelowna.To get there you take a road that serpentines up one of the highest hills overlooking the lake and where you can still see the remnants of charred trees from the firestorm of 2003 that burned over 60,000 acres.

At Carmelis you simply must sample the cheeses, buy some goat cheese and crackers to take back to your hotel room and especially don’t miss the goat’s milk ice cream. It’s totally worth the calories.  (In fact, everything in the Okanagan Valley seemed to be worth the calories, so bring pants with an elastic waistband.)

Speaking of that elastic waistband…

Tim Horton’s and I are just taking a break from each other

On our last day in Kelowna we decided to do something absolutely crazy and not have breakfast at Tim Horton’s. (Tim Horton’s was the Yin to our Yang of decadent and pricey lunches and dinners at wineries.) So instead of our usual breakfast sandwich and donut at Tim’s we found the Marmalade Cat Cafe where you smell the tea brewing as soon as you walk through the door and where their breakfast sandwiches are, well, look at this:

The best breakfast place in town (Sorry Tim!)

The Okanagan Valley isn’t a one-note region. You don’t have to drink wine, enjoy jazz, water ski or even collect a pension check to find your niche here. Hey, I’d keep coming back just for that goat cheese. It was my second trip to the area and I still feel like I haven’t fully realized everything there is to enjoy, so I’m going to keep the idea of a summer home alive with Steve. (And sorry all my Canadian friends–I just let the cat out of the bag about the Okanagan Valley.)

More photos here. Click on any of them and it will take you to a slide show for better viewing. Everything looks yummier with a black background anyway, doncha think?

Channeling Sting’s Fields of Gold

28 Tuesday Aug 2012

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English Rendezvous – Final Chapter

Fields of barley. They were all around us as we made our way to the little civil parish of Hannington, Hampshire England. (If you have Sting’s song, Fields of Gold, I recommend turning it on right now as you read this post. You can find Sting’s version of Fields of Gold on iTunes. I also recommend this other lovely cover version by Eva Cassidy.)

You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in the fields of gold

Two days earlier we were in Bath and the Cotswolds and the previous day we spent at Oxford where we picnicked on the lawn overlooking the River Thames and watched people punting. As we wandered around the campus we walked by a group of students playing cricket—my first real-live experience watching cricket, even if just for a few minutes. “They could be there for days,” Steve explained. Apparently cricket is a long, arduous sport. Where you wear sweaters.

But the barley in Hampshire—the Fields of Gold, Sting wrote about as a love song—caused me to take it all as a sign that there was something indeed magical happening right at that moment. (Some people call it falling madly in love, I suppose.) It was the perfect way to wrap up my two weeks in England: the solo week I had in London, the wonderful days in Bath, the “I Love Yous” the grief, the joy, the perfect photo together. That’s a lot to pack into travel. You don’t get all that backstory when you see the stamp in my passport unless, well, you’ve read this blog, I suppose.

So she took her love
For to gaze awhile
Upon the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold

We were in Hannington because Steve Hannington is the man I was with and his family settled this part of the English county of Hampshire back before the 11th Century. I had never met anyone who hailed from a namesake town, so if Steve’s gallant nature from the previous days wasn’t enough to impress me, being a Hannington in Hannington sealed the deal for me.

Steve Hannington in Hannington, Hampshire England

Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the fields of barley
We’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we lie in the fields of gold

It didn’t take long to walk around Hannington. There is a little square in the middle of the town—more of a park—right next to the ancient All Saints’ Church. I found a post box right at the side of the lane and dropped in my postcards, though all except one, which I had intended for Jessica before I knew she had passed away. I still have that postcard and today it is pinned to my bulletin board in my home office, right above my desk.

Hannington, Hampshire England

See the west wind move like a lover so
Upon the fields of barley
Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth
Among the fields of gold
I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I’ve broken
But I swear in the days still left
We’ll walk in the fields of gold

This was our last day together before I flew back to the U.S. Last time I left Steve it was Scotland and I cried—no, I sobbed. But I was out of tears this trip. I spent the last two days grieving the loss of my friend, Jessica and now all I had left were dry eyes and this soundtrack of Sting’s Fields of Gold playing in my mind. We took time to have dinner at the one restaurant in Hannington—a little pub called The Vine and we had fish out on the patio as we watched a dog play on the lawn, performing for all who were dining.

Time to leave. We left Hannington and the sun was beginning to set as we made our way toward Gatwick airport where we would find accommodations one last time in England.

Fields of Gold

Barley is simple and rather plain looking when you look at it individually. But all laid out in a field it takes on a collective sense of golden-ness. As we departed, going down a narrow lane toward London, we had the fields on both sides of us. Like when I walked through those doors at immigration and customs in Scotland and felt my life about to change, driving through the Fields of Gold also felt a little baptismal. This entire journey to England was a collection of individual experiences (exploring London solo for a week, the death of a friend, saying, I Love You) that combined, had cast a golden hue on my future, which I saw in those fields.

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in the fields of gold

Fields of Gold, lyrics and music by Sting.

Find out where we meet up again.

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It’s about travel, saying “I love you,” and death

16 Thursday Aug 2012

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England Rendezvous, Chapter 3

My phone displayed that I had a voicemail. Normally I don’t bother with my phone while I’m traveling abroad, and I figure that I’ll listen to voicemail when I get back to the U.S. Besides, anyone important who needed to reach me while I was on holiday in Bath, England knew to just text me.

Castle Comb in the Cotswolds

It was day three of my epic romantic rendezvous in Bath, England with my long-distance suitor I met in Scotland just eight weeks prior. No distractions. No phones. Just the two us to discover Bath, the Cotswolds, and to see if I could muster the courage to say, “I love you.”

But the phone. There was a message on it and I had this feeling I needed to listen to this voicemail.

“Hi Lisa,” the voice said. “This is Jana, Jessica’s sister. I’m sorry to have to tell you, but Jessica passed away and I know you two were close and I found your phone number in her address book. I wanted to let you know when the funeral will be, so call me at….”

I just stood there looking at the stupid phone in my hand. Tears welled up in my eyes so fast that it felt like they were coming like a big wave that crashes on the shore. I inhaled and then crash! I couldn’t stop them.

Jessica and I worked together in Menlo Park, California back in the 90s. When I moved away we phoned each other weekly and wrote long epistles back and forth to each other over email where we lamented about men, our jobs, men, our coworkers, men. You get the picture. We would even watch the Oscars together over the phone and make snarky comments throughout the show. (This is what we did before Twitter, my friends.) We went to Giants games when I would come to town and traded books through the mail.

She also had lupus and had contracted an infection from a pedicure she received from a salon in her neighborhood. The infection was so bad she was hospitalized the last several months of her life and I frequently called her at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, knowing I could be easily directed to her room where I would update her on what happened in Scotland and this fantastic guy I had just met.

But she died.

Steve walked in the room and I looked up at him and he had that look on his face—the “Oh crap, she’s crying. What do I do?” look. I blurted out the words, “My friend.” Tears not just rolling but pouring down my face. “She’s dead,” I continued. “Her sister. She left me a message.” I couldn’t breath and pressed my face into his chest and sobbed. I sobbed big heavy, almost-hyperventalating tears.

The “I love yous” and the never-ending tears

I’m in Bath. Just the night before I said, “I love you” and he said it back (thank goodness). Big moment. Colossal moment. This is the desired outcome Jane Austen writes about, but I was grieving. I pulled myself together and we went downstairs to breakfast where our Bed and Breakfast host served us breakfast while I gave up trying to control the tears that seemed to never ever stop. I was sure that the other guests and the host thought we had been fighting.

A church in Castle Comb in the Cotswolds

Move on with our day’s plans. That was the only thing that we could really do. This was the day we were going to discover the Cotswold region. Every guidebook seemed to write lovingly of the romantic quaint region with its stone homes, thatched roofs and cream teas. I studied the region ahead of time. I was prepared to get wrapped up in it, but I was sad. So very sad.

The verdant landscape of the Cotswolds was like looking at a poem. There is a cadence to the hills and each little village was like hitting upon the rhyme at the end of a line. They all looked similar, but they had their own character, like words that sound the same but aren’t. It wasn’t a sad poem and it wasn’t a happy poem, but it was a comforting one.

Bourton on the Water

We held hands as we walked along the pathway at Bourton on the Water, and we would have moments of silence and then I would start talking about Jessica. Then I would tear up again and return back to silence. I didn’t quite know how to feel. My heart hung heavy with grief, but was also bursting out of my chest with spectacular joy and the feeling of being in love. I couldn’t have been in a more bifurcated moment in my entire life. Or is it possible to have two hearts in this kind of experience?

This picture with smiles and a sad heart

I wanted a photo of us in this lovely place. I asked a man if he could take our photo and Steve and I sat on a bench. “No, no,” the man said as he pointed to another bench. “Sit over here. It’s much better.” We moved to the other bench and the man, who turned out to be a photographer, took this photo with my little Kodak point-and-shoot camera. This beautifully, perfectly angled photo.

I feel like I’m spoiling the ending here but you know already that I married that man. Fast forward almost two years later and as a wedding gift, the women at my church had an artist paint a portrait based on this photo. When they revealed it to me I wept again. This photo took me back to that time when I was swept up in love in England, where “I Love Yous” were exchanged, and if you look really closely you’ll notice that in my heart I’m grieving the loss of my friend, Jessica.

Continue to next chapter.

 

Bath, England: An aphrodisiac for my long-distance love affair

12 Sunday Aug 2012

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England Rendezvous, Chapter 2

London is where we met for our second rendezvous and then drove to Bath, England for the next chapter in our epic romance. (I know, “epic” is overused. Just indulge me for a little while on this.) Only a few knew of my long-distance romance with Steve, which began in Scotland eight weeks earlier. Most people probably wouldn’t have believed it. I barely believed it myself.

We arrived at the Marlborough House—a lovely bed and breakfast in a stone Victorian house just a few blocks away from the famous Royal Crescent—and after our host drew us a map of the highlights of Bath, we made our way to the Roman Baths and Pump Room for a candlelight tour in the evening. “Oh it would be very romantic!” our host urged us. Romantic, of course! That’s why we were here—it was all for the romance.

A visit to the Roman Baths

Roman Baths

When this all came upon me–this falling in love–I wasn’t prepared to take copious notes on Bath. I didn’t go to Bath to learn of the Victoria Art Gallery or the Holburne Museum of Art. No, I was there to fall further in love–to somehow channel Jane Austen and all her heroines so that I could use Bath as some sort of aphrodisiac for my long-distance love affair.

It’s not like we needed any help. We were completely smitten in Scotland and nothing indicated that it wouldn’t continue that way, though because this was so out of the ordinary I thought that I would actually wake up and none of this had happened. So, if you’re going to dream, I thought, why not dream with Bath as the backdrop.

Evensong at Bath Abbey

Bath Abbey

Our second day in Bath, a Sunday, we visited the Bath Abbey for an Evensong presentation. If the backdrop of Bath wasn’t enough, now I had a soundtrack. Being musically trained myself, I was swept up by the acoustics of the building and prayed to God that this whole thing wouldn’t slip through my fingers.

Jane Austen, of course

We visited the Jane Austen Centre where we moved from room to room to see how Jane Austen lived, learned more about her family, looked at some of the film costumes as well as various framed letters on the walls from celebrities (notably Emma Thompson, that goddess of wit who wrote the film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility). I was surprised as to how simple and quaint the Centre was, given the massive following of Jane Austen. I suppose that’s how she would have wanted it, as she really seemed a modest person. It was almost a little odd to be in the Jane Austen Centre where I was learning about this woman who wrote fiction that were turned into movies–all about being independent and falling in love with the right person at the right time. At the same time I was living this and thought, it doesn’t have to be fiction. It feels like fiction but it doesn’t have to be.

The healing waters of Bath

There’s a lot said about the healing waters of Bath.  Historically, many went to Bath to cure themselves of their ills. Perhaps something in Bath washed over me too as well as Steve.

That rendezvous that started in Scotland? It still was alive and well in Bath too. Little did I know, I was going to soon need the healing of Bath to soothe my soul more than I could imagine.

Continue to next chapter.

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This is how I ended up in London

27 Friday Jul 2012

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England Rendezvous, Chapter 1

I wanted to do something spectacular for my 40th birthday and things got interesting when a friend suggested I join her and some other gals to hike the Swiss Alps that year. I was so onboard! How many people can say they’ve hiked the Swiss Alps?

Well, not me, it turns out.

It had been two months since I rendezvoused with the man in Scotland. After that trip that sent my heart soaring and my tears flowing as goodbyes were exchanged at the end of our six days together, we phoned, we emailed and I hoped we would see each other again. The closer it got to the Swiss Alps trip the more I realized that given limited vacation time at work and limited funds for a long-distance courtship, I had to make a choice: Hike the Alps with some fun women or take another chance to see if what happened in Scotland had any sticking power.

So I didn’t hike the Alps. I bailed and decided to go to London instead–by myself, actually. Turns out, it’s also rather convenient for Steve (the man I met in Scotland) to rendezvous again with me. Once I let Steve know about my plans to go to London he immediately jumped at the chance to meet me there, but only met me for week two of my trip since I wanted to have some time to myself in London.

My travel journal for the England rendezvous

I just adore London and I’m so glad I made the decision to do the first half of the trip by myself. Here’s what I learned:

  • You actually don’t have to take the Tube everywhere because most of the time a lovely walk through Hyde Park will get you to where you need to be. (This was a big “duh!” moment for me.)

London’s Hyde Park

Hyde Park, London

  • I arrived the week London was having a heat wave. Londoners took this opportunity to sunbathe at Hyde Park and I thought I was pasty white!

Londoners enjoying the high temps at Hyde Park

  • They have Subway sandwich shops in London–same menu and about the same prices in the U.S., which totally saved me loads of money on food.
  • Other great food options for lunch include Pret a Manger and Marks and Spencer. I discovered this when I watched where the locals were eating.
  • Best view of London is not the pricey “Eye,” but take the stairs clear to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral–completely breathtaking and an awesome workout.

View of London from atop St. Paul’s Cathedral

  • You don’t get ice in your water at dinner. They like to serve it room temperature, so you gotta ask for ice, ice baby.
  • They have potato chips of every flavor imaginable.
  • A co-worker from England convinced me before my trip that I should take the double decker bus tour to get the lay of the land during my first couple of days and you know what? Best. Advice. Ever. (Yes, snobs, she was right.)
  • Edinburgh is only a 5 and 1/2 hour train ride from London and that’s how close I was to Steve.
  • Sometimes it’s okay to walk away from previous travel plans. Sure, I didn’t hike the Alps, but if I did, I would have missed London as well as a big part in the next chapter of my life.

London

London

Tower Bridge in London

Find out what happens in the next chapter.

Making this year’s Christmas Card

26 Saturday Nov 2011

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For the past 10 years or so I’ve been making my own Christmas cards. It’s not exactly because it’s cheaper. (It’s not.) And it definitely doesn’t save me time, particularly back in the day when I was rubber stamping, glittering, cutting out and embossing 50 plus cards. As if the holidays weren’t stressful enough, this business of making my own cards turned me into a combination of Martha Stewart and Joan Crawford–the “Mommie Dearest” Joan Crawford.

But thanks to Apple, I’ve been making my own cards using iPhoto’s cards feature and have been doing that since around 2008 when I made thank-you cards for my wedding. It’s still not cheaper but it does save me time and I get to maintain that personalized touch because somehow I’m thinking there’s some sort of Pulitzer Prize-equivalent for making homemade Christmas cards.

In a typical year my husband and I have a plethora of photos from which to choose from our many adventures during the year. However, this year was pretty quiet because I was limping around most of the year. We just didn’t travel a whole lot in 2011. (sigh)

So, one night while wasting away an entire evening on Pinterest, I found this photo. I thought, Okay, I’m totally stealing that idea.

All it took was bribing my husband with a meal and getting my photographer friend, Jolie, to snap the photo for me and we got this!

Front of Christmas card

Inside of Christmas card

I couldn’t find the “Merry Christmas” garland that I wanted, so I ended up making it myself. So, I guess this Christmas card is actually a hybrid of the way I used to make cards (totally arts and crafts) and using modern technology (Apple’s iPhoto).

In the end, it turned out way cuter than I could imagine. Can’t wait to get them back from Apple!